Opening and closing remarks

Speakers

Nicholas Cox, Durham University, UK

Date

5 June – 6 June 1997

The 3rd UK user group meeting took place at the Royal Statistical Society in
London on 5th and 6th June.

Previous meetings took place in London in 1995 and 1996. Ana Timberlake, of
Timberlake Consultants, has organised all the logistics, and has been helped
on the academic side by several people, notably Patrick Royston. This year I
helped arrange the papers.

“UK users” is just a label and these meetings have always been
organised informally and open to all interested. There is no club, no
committee, no constitution. This year, as two years ago, we were delighted
to have Bill Gould from StataCorp attend. With him this time was James
Hardin, and there were visitors from Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands
as well, all equally welcome. About 50 people participated in total.

There was a set of user papers and several contributions from Bill and
James. In addition, there was a now traditional `wishes and grumbles'
session focusing on what should be fixed and added in future releases of
Stata.

The timetable for this meeting had been posted on the Stata website
www.stata.com for some time. Even though it has now taken place, you may
still wish to contact individual paper givers. Most paper givers are working
on intended submissions to the STB.

So far this meeting appears to be the only one of its kind, and we get
periodic queries on how it is organised. There is no trick beyond being sure
that you have a critical mass of users near you and a few keen people
willing to do a bit of work to set up a meeting.

I think the only other thing to say is simply that it is a great pleasure to
meet other Stata users and discuss ideas and experiences face-to-face. As
Statalist also shows, a common interest in statistical applications through
an excellent program unites a diverse and interesting group of people.